Invisible-Movement.net’s donation & suggestion rally 2010
HEY, EVERYONE, IT’S AN OPEN MIC NIGHT!
Sorry to disappoint you, but you are not going to get a chance to sing. More likely, to give some ideas and donate some money.
What will the money be used for? As usual, site’s hosting costs and message board hosting, as they’re not hosted on the same server, yet they’re both resource hogs. Any funds that exceed the required amount will be used for random giveaways, to pay the material/commute costs for people who’d film events, if any events come up and similar site-related things. You can donate in a currency of your choice, but remember the difference.
Donators of the past have been listed on this page. Once I have a list of all 2010 ones, they’ll be there, too. <3 If you're a Paypal user, please use the button bellow to send the donations to my friend who runs Stonecoldbush.com (a great, great RHCP archive site that you should also give all support to as it’s the only one that exclusively deals with music, no pap crap!), and he’ll forward them to my hosting account. Any amount is OK, in past there have been donations as small as 1.50$ and as big as 100$.
Alternative solutions
If you’re a Moneybookers user, send the donations to iva@invisible-movement.net and I’ll transfer them to the hosting company’s funds…thing.
If you’re from Serbia, contact me so I can give you the “tekući raÄun” you can directly send a payment to.
This news item is, as stated in the title, also a suggestion box kind of a thing for Invisible Movement 7.0. Before you submit a question or a suggestion by commenting on this post, you should probably read it all. If you ask something that’s been already answered, I’ll assume you’re too lazy and I won’t reply or explain why I have not replied, as simple as that. All responses will be public, unless something’s against the site’s policies or if you used this opportunity to ask something irrelevant. Idiocy is for small children and pathetic cases.
If that makes you feel better, you can also submit your question on the site’s Formspring.me page, but be aware that there’s a character limit for both the question and its response. As usual – anything stupid, senseless, offensive or extremely poorly written will be ignored. If those things make you feel important – hold your horses, I’m getting laughs from reading them and if you want to hurt someone, you might try with the good old taking candy from a baby.
So, where do I even begin?
Over the course of the last five and half years, Invisible Movement has been online non-stop, providing you with mostly valid information on John Frusciante, the Red Hot Chili Peppers while he was with them, other projects. Despite its shaky beginnings (if anyone remembers January 2005, I’m still forever thankful to certain Anne S. from Long Island), really, really strange “rivals” looking for “competition” mostly to improve their own online image, start fires they are too much of chickens to start offline and having changed four hosting companies; it has grown into an useful place on the worldwide web, something that’s meant to remain online and not end up being someone’s short-term “obsession”. And that is exactly how I see this website’s future and I’m pleased with its direction. I do hope that everyone involved, non-involved and those jokers over there are pleased with its direction, too.
Meanwhile, many things have changed.
The Internet itself has changed a lot. For one, when Invisible Movement was a new kid on the block, everything was full of Flash and – most musicians’ official websites have defaulted to either almost-completely community-driven bullshit (pardon my language) with barely any real information on them or barely anything. Labels either go for total commercialisation or doing nothing at all. On the other side, common fan sites combine encyclopedic information scrapped from other places and paparazzi crap. In other words, a website like this, with actual effort put in it, is a rarity. That’s why it will go on, despite the unknown and confusing circumstances.
Fansites were not that easy to create six years ago. Nowadays, anyone can make a Tumblog, a Myspace page or even a Twitter account that is pseudo-aggregating news on a certain person or topic (I saw it, otherwise I wouldn’t believe it) and do whatever they want. Those things, however, shouldn’t be mistaken for websites. They’re not websites. They’re excuses for websites, mostly created with the “PERSON likes something” instead of “Person likes SOMETHING” intentions. Once again, that’s not how Invisible Movement is run.
Sadly, with the above scenario, the average Joe/Jane of the Internet has become incredibly lazy – they want everything on the front page, they need to constantly be reminded of things, they don’t go a couple of levels deep to find something and they aren’t aware of the simplest possible file types and what programs one should use to execute those. I even see people accessing this website through Google search, exclusively. After ten years of making and maintaining websites, I can only cringe at such practices, but at the same time, I will try to make it all easier for you.
Think of this site as a big library with a special shelf for new arrivals, which would then be its news blog. Just like any big library – it needs maintenance, donations and feedback.
So, here’s what’s to come during the summer of 2010…next to a total revamp and reorganisation.
These things will surely be improved in the next site version:
– The first section in the nav. menu. It will be scanned for anything potentially untrue, offensive or wrong in any other way. As of late January 2009, the owner of this website has, hopefully, realised what true respect towards someone you don’t know is and whatever it takes, this true respect shall be preserved.
– The search box will be in a more prominent place, so you won’t have an excuse for being lazy.
– There will be a basic FAQ, featuring answers to, to my surprise extremely popular questions, such as “Does John smoke?”, “What is in those bottles that appear in the Funky Monks documentary?”, “What is a Flash player” and “How does one keep a file for themselves?” In case someone doesn’t believe it, these really are the four most common questions site visitors have asked or searched for within the last two years.
– The discography section will be completed, the right way. Same goes for gigography, gear & tabs and the sub-section with audio files of cover songs and similar interludes from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ shows.
– There will be a clearly defined list of where you can buy what and how rare/expensive some things are. This will be simply a little guide, and not a call to anyone to compete on who’s the biggest fan…things that are in one’s heart are not to be calculated through what you’ve bought and how much of it you’ve bought.
– The site won’t be accepting link exchanges from websites that post anything illegal, anything related to paparazzi and spying people’s social network profiles; or the sites forking its contents without asking AND linking back. The first is against the site’s ethics, the second is like defecating on someone else’s work.
These things are surely to disappear with the next site version:
– The whole community section. Some of it will be going to some sort of a site’s historical archive, some of it will be gone, some of it will be addressed through the forum or possible member profiles in the future. The later will be done for security reasons, so people wouldn’t be posting comments using someone else’s identity or stealing others’ identity any other way.
These things are in danger of being removed from Invisible Movement:
– Fanart gallery.
These are the things you aren’t likely to get now (or perhaps ever):
– Downloads of entire folders. Don’t be lazy.
– Some sort of a daily quote, daily photo, daily anything thing. While some things are randomly pulled out to the site’s audience on Twitter, there’s no need for lazy stuff on this website. Want contents? There are over seven hundred of pages, find what you need yourself.
– The whole site being translated. I’m sorry, but that’s like cleaning the Exclusion Zone with a toothbrush or moving sand from the bottom of the Pacific ocean to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and back.
– A gallery you can upload any given crap to.
So, all clear?
